


it well may be (we will never meet again)

by carmilla_unscripted



Category: The Wicked Years Series - Gregory Maguire, Wicked - All Media Types, Wicked - Schwartz/Holzman
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Future Fic, Gelphie, Hurt/Comfort, Lesbian Character, Lesbian Sex, POV Glinda, wlw
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 22:57:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17272739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carmilla_unscripted/pseuds/carmilla_unscripted
Summary: Glinda gives her a look. 'I’m here now', it says. 'What are you going to do about it?'She resists every urge to run into the green girl’s arms. They aren’t being offered but she knows—she knows—that they’d catch her if she gave up the stilted pretense of this frosty entrance.—They meet again. There's a reckoning of feelings. It's quite gay.





	it well may be (we will never meet again)

**Author's Note:**

> smut comes in chapter two. chapter one is just a lot of gross sniveling and feelings and such.  
> Thank you to anyone reading!

Well, it is Elphie, isn’t it, long green limbs and raven-colored hair, stooped in a most undignified position among tomato stalks and green beans. On the picket fence, a painted sign that says Apothecary. Glinda snorts. That’s one way of putting it.

 

Smoke rises in the distance but she pays it no heed. For all she knows it is a normal feature of the landscape. On this side of the Dragon Time Clock, anything is possible. 

 

Kansas.

 

“Oh, Elphie.”

 

The figure in the garden springs up. 

 

“I’m closed,” she intones without turning around. She brushes her skirts and stamps out a crick in her knee.

 

Glinda unlatches the gate.

 

“What about I’m closed don’t you—” Elphaba stops when she twists her body and sees who it is.

 

Glinda, predictably, is overdressed for the occasion and its set pieces—the rickety picket fence and its peeling white paint, the stooping farm house and chicken coop, the clucking hens and rising smell of compost. 

 

Among them Glinda, dressed to the nines in order to make a formidable appearance before the members of Emerald City’s parliament, to whom she had announced her spontaneous vacation that very morning back in Oz. 

 

It had not occurred to her, after ten-odd years, that it would be so easy to find Elphaba. That it would happen so fast. But then, even in this other world, green-skinned girls are anomalies. 

 

Glinda’s bottom lip trembles.

 

It’s her, but it shouldn’t be. It shouldn’t be, because Elphie is dead. She succumbed to a whining brat of a girl with a water bucket, ten years ago.

 

It’s Elphie, though, isn’t it? The crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes and frown lines around her mouth—they make her all the more Elphie. 

 

Elphaba’s scowl adjusts, but only slightly.

 

“You shouldn’t be here.”

 

So, it was going to be this way then. Glinda isn’t surprised—disappointed, yes, but Elphie’s personality is glacial and runs deep, not likely to change just because ten years and a whole other world separate them.

 

So Glinda does what she does best. She hitches up her skirts and sweeps into the garden. If this is the Elphaba she’s going to get, well…a dozen embittered parliament dandies had taught her a thing or two about resisting intimidation tactics. 

 

Satisfaction pings off her as Elphaba slides her gaze over the skin exposed by the gown. A vengeful part of her had wanted to shock Elphie. A witch, in her own right, she’d become. And that, after Elphaba had deceived her with the horrid trick of her sham death. 

 

Glinda gives her a look. I’m here now, it says. What are you going to do about it?

 

She arches a brow and resists every urge to run into the green girl’s arms. They aren’t being offered but she knows—she knows—that they’d catch her if she gave up the stilted pretense of this frosty entrance.

 

Elphaba expression slides to one of knowing amusement and Glinda’s resolve falters. Blustering politicians are easier targets. 

 

“Well,” Elphaba says at last. “Come on, then.”

 

A kettle is soon set on a stove in the kitchen, which opens into a small sitting room furnished with one wide, plush sofa, covered in a garish floral pattern that is distinctly not tall, rigid Elphaba’s style.

 

“A neighbor,” Elphaba grunts when Glinda slides her hand over the fabric and begins to smirk. “Helped deliver her baby. Wanted to pay me.”

 

Her voice is as dark and deep as ever, with less satin smoothness than Glinda remembers. It sends a shiver down her spine all the same. Elphaba could command whole countries with that voice. Not for the first time, Glinda wonders what might have happened if the Wizard and Morrible hadn’t gotten there first.

 

“How do you take your tea?” Elphaba asks.

 

Glinda perches at the edge of the sofa. “Same as ever,” she answers softly.

 

Elphaba arranges the tea tray without further comment. Glinda is inordinately pleased that she remembers—a dash of cream and two sugar cubes. Of course she remembers. 

 

Elphaba draws a straight-backed chair from the kitchen table and sets it across from Glinda. 

 

Glinda begins to protest but Elphaba waves her away and arranges herself neatly on the seat. She bears the same tall and imposing countenance that Glinda remembers, but her shoulders are more relaxed and her eyes are infinitely sadder. 

 

She is just about to say so when there is a knock on the door. Elphaba springs up, muttering to herself about unwanted visitors. “I’m sorry,” she clips to Glinda. “They won’t go away.”

 

A twittering, concerned young man with brown skin stands on her stoop. He says something in a rush to Elphaba, whose frown deepens as he speaks. Glinda strains to hear, but she is in full view of the doorway and the man deliberately lowers his voice once he realizes he has an audience. 

 

“I’m sorry,” Elphaba says to Glinda as she walks briskly back through the house. “This can’t be helped.” 

 

“By all means,” Glinda says lightly, cooling her tea with a little wave of her breath. A simple task; she can sense that the magic in this world is weaker than in Oz, but she still seems to be able to access bursts of it for minor spells like this one.

 

Elphaba throws open a cabinet that Glinda hadn’t noticed before, on a section of the wall which she is sure had been empty a few moments ago. Elphaba gathers a stack of thick books in her hands and sets them carelessly on the table. 

 

Glinda, casting a curious glance at the man, who is perched now on the mat just inside the door, sets down her tea and clicks into the kitchen. She can sense the man’s eyes on her. He is dressed in burlap over-alls and even from here she has noticed the callouses on his hands. He reminds her of her farmers, her field hands, her working class which she is working to restore in the face of all the industrial damage the Wizard had wrought. Years it had taken, and an immense humbling of her vanity, to win the public’s—the true public’s—good graces.

 

Her gown sparkles in the sunlight. Her heels click on the floor. She winces; it sounds like glass shattering in the silence. Maybe she had not made the right choice after all. 

 

She examines the volumes on the table; cook books, average and worn. This is what the man is so anxious about?

 

No. The binding of one of the books is torn; below the faux leather—she knows it is faux because it is Elphaba—something glows. She peels back the binding further.

 

Elphaba snaps it closed. She is there out of nowhere, looming over her. “Don’t,” she grits. Darkness swirls in her eyes, the black intensity that Glinda recognizes from those last months they’d spent together before their worlds fell apart.

 

She finds she is not afraid of it anymore. Recognizes, perhaps, that she has adopted a bit of it herself from the green girl. The difference, of course, being that Elphaba wears it on the skin of her pointed, pearly teeth. Glinda could never be so bold.

 

She’s evidently found the book she’s looking for because she sets the others back on the shelf and mutters a few words; the cabinet disappears, as if it had never been there at all, though Glinda recognizes a good invisibility charm when she hears one.

 

A hand is on her collarbone; long, cool, green fingers. A shudder runs through Glinda as Elphaba lifts her chin so that their gazes slide together. “You’ll…be here?” she murmurs, the first cracks of vulnerability that Glinda has seen.

 

“Of course,” Glinda says, her throat tight. “But…”

 

Elphaba presses a swift kiss to her cheek; it’s hardly a kiss, more a brush of the lips on Glinda’s skin, but it stops her words cold. A delicious bloom rises on her cheeks, she knows, she can feel it, the heat flashing down her spine. Bold. Elphie has always been bold, and far less likely to use words to show where she stands. But with the soft clash of their skin, Glinda knows beyond a doubt that she will sit and stay in this house until Elphaba returns, be it hours or weeks or years. She will be here. 

 

“Don’t try to follow me.” Elphaba secures her book in a bag which she slings over her chest. In a sweep of her skirts, she guides the man at the door out into the steeping Kansas heat. They clasp hands and break into a run. Through the garden, into the vast open landscape, pricked with golden grass. In a moment Elphie lifts them off the ground and the next, they are just a wink in the sky.

 

+++

 

Dusk brings a purple hue to the prairie. Glinda lingers on the doorstep like a farm wife waiting for her husband to return from the fields. In Elphaba’s bedroom she had found a chest of clothes; a pair of trousers are now stitched around her waist, a bit strained at the pouch of her tummy, but pooling at her ankles. She rolls up the hems until her bare feet are exposed to the evening breeze, and searches the skies. 

 

In the east, the plume of smoke she had seen on her arrival has dwindled. There is no sign of a flying green witch.

 

Though Elphaba is neat and conservative in her housekeeping tastes, Glinda had noticed the shabbiness lurking in its corners right away. She steels herself against the concern that floats in her chest and sets about the task of tidying. It has been a long time since she has done such menial, physical labor. First she cleans up the tea things. Then she finds lemon juice in a cabinet and pours it on a cloth, which she uses to scrub away stray marks on the floor. A duster makes quick work of the cobwebs and corners. 

 

She wonders if Elphaba will be hungry on her return, so she investigates the pantry, a small closet space with limited stock. She scrunches her nose at the dried sprouts and beans she’s able to scrounge up in the end, but pours them in a pot on the stove all the same, and sprinkles brown sugar and cinnamon on top.

 

The meal congeals on the table. Glinda lacks an appetite.

 

The sun sets and the night grows long.

 

Elphaba does not return. Glinda waits steadfastly on the sofa. She puts on another spot of tea and drinks it with only a pinch of sugar, not wanting to waste Elphaba’s supply. Who knows how rations work in this world, but she has gotten used to doing without in Oz.

 

It was all of a coincidence that she’d discovered the green girl’s whereabouts and…aliveness. She’d set a special team of scientists to study the spot of dampness that had been discovered on the flagstones of Fiyero’s family palace. The stain of water had never faded, not at all in the decade that had passed. Glinda imagined, for a long time, that it was a bit of Elphaba’s essence, lingering. But her team of Animal scientists found no trace of human DNA, in the end, and that was when she began to suspect the trick that Elphaba had played. 

 

Water. Allergic, she’d been, to be sure, but could it melt her down to nothing? Elphaba was cleverer than that. She should have seen it sooner. Grief had distracted her, grief and the task her wicked witch had assigned to her. She’d had a country to rebuild, a people with whom to gain enough trust that slowly she’d be able to turn the tide of the resentment towards Elphaba and Animals. 

 

She’d succeeded, at least, when it came to the Animals.

 

The government could sustain itself for a while. She’d have to return eventually, but it wouldn’t fall apart if she took a brief recess, not after the ten years of work she’d done to insure its stability. Besides, she thinks grimly, if she came back and they’d started a civil war in her absence, they’d be bereft at disappointing her.

 

For a decade she’d channeled Elphaba’s selfless sense of righteousness. It didn’t come naturally but it was the least, the absolute very least, she could do to honor her memory. 

 

The door creaks open and Glinda jumps to her feet. Her curls flounce around her shoulders, slightly flattened now that they’d gone nearly twenty-four hours without being maintained.

 

Elphaba is in a foul mood; her face is a storm cloud. Her eyes flash like lightning. 

 

Glinda moves instinctively towards her and the green woman freezes. She stares at Glinda a long while and Glinda stands completely still, letting herself be examined. Elphaba lifts her knobby fingers to the bridge of Glinda’s nose. Glinda exhales.

 

“I thought perhaps I’d dreamed you,” Elphaba breathes.

 

“Men have said that to me before,” Glinda says, smirking.

 

Elphaba scowls and yanks her hand away.

 

Glinda softens. “It’s sweeter coming from you,” she promises. 

 

Elphaba rolls her eyes. “What do I smell?”

 

Glinda beams and guides Elphaba to the kitchen table. “I thought you might be hungry—the contents of your pantry are dreadful, I’ll have you know, I may have to start doing your shopping myself.”

 

“You see yourself staying long, then?” Elphaba murmurs, almost to herself, as she inspects the congealed supper of beans mixed in melted brown sugar and butter. 

 

“Well, it’s cold now.” Glinda frowns, ignoring her question. “No matter.” She picks up the pot and sets it back on the stove to heat for a moment.

 

“Excuse me,” Elphaba protests, lifting her fork. “I was going to eat that.”

 

“You can wait a minute,” Glinda says airily.

 

“Yes, m’am,” Elphaba murmurs, quirking her mouth like she’s amused about something. Glinda gets the feeling she’s being laughed at, but she doesn’t mind if it means the frown lines on the green woman’s temple fade. She’s beautiful either way, but the knot in Glinda’s chest loosens to see Elphie set at ease.

 

They sit at the table in silence and wait for the food to reheat. Slowly the kitchen warms with the scent of beans and cinnamon. 

 

“What did you do to it?” Elphaba says in wonder as she digs in, eating straight from the pot. Glinda wonders how long she’s lived alone, to shirk this expectation of propriety. She wonders what she’s been eating, to sound so stunned at the little tinkering Glinda had done with some sugar and spices.

 

But she takes the cue from Elphaba and scoops her fork straight into the pot of beans. They’re overcooked; Glinda notices, but Elpahaba chews contently and stares at Glinda like she holds the key to culinary mastery.

 

They do the dishes together, a rhythmic process of washing and drying that is foreign and familiar at the same time. Glinda wipes her hands of soapy suds and leans on the counter as Elphaba dries the cooking pot and sets it on the rack next to the sink. 

 

Glinda shivers and rubs her arms under the sleeves of the long shirt she’s wearing. Elphaba inspects her borrowed outfit. “Helped yourself, did you?” she murmurs. 

 

“I’m glad I amuse you,” Glinda says tartly.

 

Elphaba shakes her head. “Don’t,” she says. “Don’t be like that. You did surprise me, you know, showing up here.” 

 

Glinda scoffs. “Because you didn’t surprise me at all, rising from the dead.” She tries very hard not to let her voice crack. She almost, but does not quite, succeed. 

 

Elphaba steps closer and trails a hand down Glinda’s arm. “Sarcasm doesn’t suit you,” she says, ducking her head to meet Glinda’s gaze. “That’s more my style.”

 

Glinda pulls away. She aches to dart into the green woman’s arms, knows that despite the plumpness Glinda herself has gained in the intervening years, Elphaba’s long limbs would still be able to reach all the way around her. But she is angry, and hurt, and betrayed. And she has missed her best friend these long, long years full of political toil and turmoil. 

 

Elphaba sighs. “Come.” She gently guides Glinda by the elbow to the sofa. “It’s been a long day,” she admits. “Might we postpone the emotional confrontation to tomorrow? I assume you’re staying.”

 

There’s a careful detachment in her voice that infuriates Glinda, who finally meets her eyes so that Elphaba may realize how angry she is. It’s only once she has a chance to truly take in the sight of the green woman that she starts to recognize little signs of fatigue and exhaustion; plum circles under her eyes, made darker by the green pigment of her skin; dust scattered across her collarbone and a fine layer of it in her hair; shoulders slumped; a slight tremor of her hands.

 

Glinda’s temper deflates. She isn’t happy, but she understands at last that there is a more pressing matter. “Where did you go with that man?” she demands.

 

Elphaba closes her eyes. Shakes her head. “You don’t need to concern yourself with—” 

 

“Oh no,” Glinda snaps. “I will concern myself with whatever I very well please.” 

 

She won’t be locked out again. She can see it on Elphaba’s face, the wheels turning, the internal mapping of an agenda that any knowledge of will be denied to Glinda. Again. “Where did you fly off to with that man—don’t think I didn’t notice the flying, Elphie—and why do you look like you’ve just been in a tussle with a dust storm?”

 

Elphaba stares at her, taken aback and for once, speechless. Glinda sits back in satisfaction. There. A real reaction for the first time all day. She’d been beginning to get sick of those manufactured expressions of ironic amusement. A favorite of Elphaba’s from their Shiz days. Glinda remembers. She remembers everything.

 

And she has an inkling, just a hunch, that no one has snapped back at the scary green witch at the edge of town in all the ten years that Glinda has been out of her life. Because only Glinda would dare.

 

“Well?” she demands.

 

Elphaba lowers her eyes; her black lashes flutter. Finally she admits, “They call me to…settle altercations sometimes.” She licks her lips. “I have…somewhat of a reputation.”

 

Glinda laughs. Reputation, indeed. 

 

Elphaba fixes her with a glare. “No, you don’t understand. In Oz, it was the Animals. Here, people are segregated according to the color of their skin.” She chuckles without a shred of amusement. “That’s why they don’t know quite what to do with me. I don’t fit neatly into their race relations.”

 

Glinda softens. “So what happened today?”

 

Elphaba snorts. “Same as always. Team of white boys with nothing better to do getting frisky on the wrong side of town. You’d think after going to so much trouble to separate the races they would uphold their end of the bargain and stay separated. But oppression has never worked according to reason, has it?” She frowns, and the storm starts brewing again in her eyes, and Glinda knows she is remembering, because she’s remembering too, the frantic flying monkeys in their cages, the helplessness of Doctor Dillamond reduced to bleating on all fours, still dressed in his professor’s jacket and tie.

 

“Is it terrible in every world, Glinda?” 

 

A shred of her Elphie, creeping through, staring at Glinda with a desperate, inquiring expression.

 

It is not a question to which she’s looking for an answer, Glinda knows. 

 

“You haven’t changed a bit then,” she says instead, annoyance colored with worry as she fully realizes what Elphie’s been up to. “Flying around playing vigilante for the meek and the mild. You couldn’t give yourself even a moment’s peace. The world is not yours to save, Elphaba Thropp. Haven’t you learned that by now?”

 

Elphaba tenses; a moment ago, their knees had almost been touching. Now she puts distance between them again. “And I thought you had learned,” she snaps. “Someone has to try. No one else ever does, so it’s got to be me.”

 

Glinda scoffs. “That’s not true and you know it. I tried. I tried for over a decade because I thought you were dead. I thought you were dead Elphie, and I made you all sorts of promises, and I had to keep them because you were dead. But you weren’t dead, not really, you were just gone. You left me instead, all alone in that wretched world to solve all of its problems by myself. Do you—do you know how lonely I’ve been…” Her voice breaks. A sob pulls itself from her throat without her permission. Tears tumble from her eyes. She doesn’t remember the last time she’s cried. 

 

“Do you know how awful people are?” Her chest cracks open; her throat wells with barely contained sobs. “Do you know how much it hurts to care?”

 

It’s the stupidest question she could have asked.

 

Of course Elphaba knows. Of course she does. 

 

But even Elphie has never been able to resist her tears. The green girl drops whatever pretense is left between them and scoops Glinda up in her arms. Their bodies slump against each other and Glinda realizes Elphaba has been waiting for this too, for the bow to break, the tension to snap, so that they could stop acting petulant and embittered and distant long enough to remember the relief of being wrapped up together.

 

Elphaba holds her so hard she can’t breathe. Scrawny and gangly—she’d never grown into her limbs—but strong. Like unyielding iron, bent out of its natural, sturdy shape to encompass all of Glinda. Finding that it quite liked this new way of being. 

 

Glinda slides her hands up Elphie’s chest and curls into her. Lets herself be held. She has been so strong for so long. She’s forgotten what it feels like to be held by someone stronger than her.

 

“I thought you were dead,” she mumbles.

 

“Shhh.” Elphaba tightens her arms. Her head rests on top of Glinda’s. “I know, my sweet. I know.”'

 

“I would’ve helped you,” Glinda says. She hiccups through another sob. “If I had known, I would’ve helped you.” She sits up and clings to the collar of Elphaba’s top, pleading. “If I had known—you didn’t have to go alone.”

 

Elphaba cups the back of Glinda’s neck. She grips her hard and stares into Glinda’s eyes. “No, listen. And let you be subjected to the mob? I would have never forgiven myself. And I wasn’t—I wasn’t alone.”

 

“What?” Glinda wipes her cheek clean of tears. “What do you mean?”

 

Elphaba worries her bottom lip with her teeth. “I wasn’t going to tell you…I didn’t want you to feel you’d lost him all over again…”

 

“What?” Still, the green woman hesitates. Glinda shakes her a little. “Just tell me, Elphie.” She can’t stand not knowing things, anymore.

“Fiyero…” Elphaba raises her eyebrows meaningfully.

 

Glinda gasps. Then whips her head around, looking for some sign of him. How could she have missed it? “Where is he?” she cries, fresh tears blotching her skin.

 

“No, no,” Elphaba groans. “No, this is why… Listen, Glinda.” She returns her grip to the back of Glinda’s neck. Cementing her so that their eyes are forced to meet. Glinda can tell her own are wild and red. 

 

Elphaba’s are just dull and sad and Glinda knows before she says a word.

 

“He came with me, through the Dragon Time Clock. My spell…it changed him so that he could survive…for a while.” Elphaba purses her lips grimly. “Do you remember the girl, that Dorothy girl, came to the castle with a set of companions? Fiyero was one of them.”

 

Glinda frowns. She knows this story like she knows her own name. Fiyero was not a character she’d ever heard included. “No, Elphie, no…there was Boq, and a scarecrow, and that poor lion cub, all grown…”

 

Elphaba touches their foreheads and Glinda is grateful for the physical support because she has a feeling that whatever Elphaba says next is going to hurt.

 

She’s already believed Fiyero was dead, though, all these years, so what difference does it make now? 

 

“Did no one ever tell you where the scarecrow came from?”

 

It takes Glinda a moment to realize what Elphaba means. Then she jerks away in surprise. “You…you mean…”

 

Elphaba nods.

 

“Scarecrows…” Elphaba quirks her lips, but Glinda sees the pain in her eyes. “They don’t fare well in Kansas. Especially when they live with a witch who is good at making enemies.” She closes her eyes. “This is the second house I’ve lived in…the first was burned down.”

 

“No…” Glinda’s lip trembles. 

 

And oh, there is a difference, now. Somehow, the loss is all the more acute for knowing that she’d had a chance, and missed it. A chance for what? She doesn’t know. To say goodbye, perhaps.

 

Elphaba nods. She takes a shaky breath. Her lip trembles. It’s obvious that the conversation, coupled with the day, has taken a lot out of her.

 

Glinda stands briskly. “Take me to your bedroom,” she commands. 

 

Elphaba stares up at her in bemusement, at the sudden change in mood. Glinda cradles the green woman’s fingers and links them together. “You’re right,” Glinda says by way of explanation. They are both too exhausted for emotional confrontations and yet, they'd tumbled into one anyway.

 

“I usually am,” Elphaba murmurs.

 

A balloon of tension releases in Glinda’s chest and she giggles. Here they are, back on solid ground. It is as if no time has passed at all. Ten years is nothing. Worlds away is nothing. She is Glinda and this is Elphaba and there is no one else in any world who Glinda loves more. She was dead but now she is risen and giddiness erupts in Glinda’s throat as the reality of that most important truth begins to set in.

 

“Well, what in particular am I right about, this time, my dear?” 

 

Glinda shakes her head and manages a smile through her tears. “Don’t be clever,” she whispers.

 

Elphaba stands, and now towers over Glinda. “I can’t usually help it,” she admits, stroking her finger down Glinda’s cheekbone. Glinda leans into her. Elphaba spreads her fingers so the entirety of her hand cradles Glinda. Her breath puffs in warm little bursts against Glinda’s face but her hand is cold, her fingers nearly freezing to the touch. 

 

Glinda lifts her own hand to hold the one that is cradling her. Warming her. Glinda has always been able to warm her. Soften her. It is a spell that requires no magic or spellbook, and one she has always been particularly good at. A little rusty maybe, but it’s just like holding a wand—your hand remembers the shape of it even if it’s been years. She stares up into Elphaba’s dark, shining eyes.

 

“What am I right about, again?” Elphaba murmurs.

 

Glinda pouts. “Well, now you’ve been fresh to me,” she says. “So I don’t want to tell you.”

 

A lopsided smile crosses Elphaba’s face. “I suppose I’ll have to force it out of you then,” she says. “With one of my wicked spells.”

 

A spark of something shoots through Glinda. Definitely not magic. Well, not magic of any kind she knows. The air has shifted. The dark melancholy of the moment before has been banished—not forever, but for a time. Long enough that Glinda can feel the old anticipation of a sparring match with a partner that does not want to truly harm her, but is her equal in every way. “You forget,” she replies, toes tensing in eagerness. Their lips are so close as to be touching. “I have spells of my own now.”

 

Elphaba’s mouth is suddenly at her ear. “Any you’d like to teach me?” she whispers, lips vibrating against the hollow below Glinda’s earlobe. 

 

Glinda shivers and giggles. “I can think of a few things I’d like to teach you,” she allows.

 

“Mmm.” Elphaba twirls a lock of Glinda’s hair around her finger. “For example…?”

 

“Well…” Glinda considers. “I suppose you’ll just have to keep me around long enough to find out.”

 

Uncertainty catches in her throat as the very real possibility occurs to her that just because she has found Elphaba does not mean Elphaba wants her there. A day, even an hour before, if such a thought had occurred to her, she would have scoffed and insisted; under no circumstances would she let Elphaba abandon her again. But she hadn’t thought this far ahead. She hadn’t completely believed she would even find Elphaba; it had been nothing more than a hunch, an instinct. A secret, foolish hope that in all the worlds there was someone left who loved her… 

 

“Oh, my sweet,” Elphaba buries her face in Glinda’s neck, clenching every sinewy muscle around her. “I could never let you go. It’s been dreadful without you. I’m a witch, I have captured you here.” Her teeth nip the skin at the base of Glinda’s neck. “You’re home for good now…” She lifts her head, uncertainty passing over her face for a second. It is a new look, for her. “Aren’t you?”

 

There in her arms, Glinda is.


End file.
